By k.s.

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therapy

As a hurting individual like myself, I feel as if one of the most important things during the healing process is for the pain to be acknowledged; not by the person hurting themselves, but by the people around them.

I just want someone to understand how hard this is. I want someone to agree that yes, this indeed fucking sucks. I feel like I’m constantly being dismissed by the people around me. It’s hard to compare pain. Pain is not relative. My mother is making an active choice not to be a part of my life. Your mother is an alcoholic. Who is qualified to determine who gets to hurt more?

When I explain how awful it is not to have my mother, I always get the same response. “Why would you want someone like that in your life anyways?” That’s not the point. Just because she’s a horrible person doesn’t dismiss my natural instinct to want a mother. As shitty as she is, sometimes I think it would be easier if I never moved out and was stuck in that little room in that little town. That was routine. It was what I knew. I knew my mother for what she was and she was never going to change. But at least she had some kind of bearing on my life. Now it’s easier to tell people she’s dead rather than explain that my mother hates me so much, she once tried to kill me. At least I get sympathy that way, and not horrified, confused looks.

I don’t understand how depression works. I don’t think I ever will. It’s like getting in your car with the intent of getting away and realizing there’s no air in any of the tires. It’s being physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted but not being able to go to sleep. I’m trying to tell my brain what I need to do but it’s not listening to me. It’s scary how my body reacts in a way I can’t control, no matter how hard I try.

Sometimes I stay awake at night going over all the things I want to tell my therapist. When I actually get to my appointment, I never have enough courage to say exactly what I want, in the exact tone I want. I always try to sugarcoat it. But I want him to know how badly in suffering right now, and it’s hard to do that when I’m always downplaying everything in my life.

Today was my second session of therapy. I still can’t fall asleep before 4am. Dr. O gave me some home remedies that might help. If that doesn’t work I’ll have to take drugs.

I had to take a trip somewhere by myself after the session. All the feelings were just too raw and intense. I couldn’t just go back to my room.

We talked about what’s keeping me up at night. I’m a little worry wart. I have a whole layer of anxiety that comes alive at night.

I have no one to talk to about my anxiety. I don’t have someone to express all of my fears to. I explained to him my friends and their natural tendencies. He thinks I don’t have anyone I can count on, but that’s not entirely true. If you put together all of my friends, you get one whole, solid person. Each friend is good for a different kind of thing. I would go to my friend; let’s call her Stacy, for a good night out or a lot of laughs. She’s not the kind of person who wants to know the personal and horrible details of my life. There are really only a few people I can turn to when the depression starts to take over my life. Dr. O thinks I should start opening up to my other friends and family and tell them what’s really going on. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, though. He tells me that if they really cared about me, they would listen and endure it. I’m torn between thinking, “If they were really my friend they would want to listen,” and, “It’s not everyone’s job to care about me.”

There’s another topic of discussion. I worry I am a burden. I fear being an inconvenience. It’s in my nature and something I can’t change. I feel like a burden because my mother made me believe I was. It’s not someone else’s job to take care of me, yet I am completely incapable of being the sole caretaker. It’s a catch-22. If you grow up trying to be completely self-reliant, you end up missing out on a lot of opportunities. Dr. O told me that in order to gain a level of intimacy, I need to allow myself to be vulnerable. Otherwise I will never find someone to be there and care for me 100% of the time.

I miss my ex-boyfriend. Let’s call him Zach. I don’t miss him in the way that most people miss their exes. I miss him because he was my caretaker at an extremely vulnerable time in my life. I took it for granted. In some ways, I used him. Zach stood by my side for 2 long years. When my mother tried to kill me, he drove outside my house for an hour hoping I could sneak outside. He opened his home to me, gave me his family, and loved me unconditionally…until the very end at least. I miss his companionship. I never had a person like that in my life. His warmness literally started to chip away at my solid effort of keeping a stone wall. Zach knew I was depressed, but he made me live. It sounds really gushy and honestly it’s starting to even make me sick, but he was a strong constant in my life and I miss him. I don’t know if I’m still in love with him anymore. It’s been a year since we broke up. It’s been a very hard year. I think I broke up with him because I thought I didn’t deserve him. I was punishing myself. I think about him almost every day. He really held me together. But it’s not his job to do that anymore.

Today I started therapy. I never knew how fast an hour could go when you’re talking about yourself. My therapist is good. He’s going to fix me. Let’s call him Dr. O. It was just an initial counseling meeting and I spent the whole time telling him my life story. Therapy is so weird. You go in and tell a stranger your whole life story without even knowing anything about them. But I did gather some information:

He’s married.

He has nice tissues.

He needs a new haircut.

He eats salads for lunch.

It’s not much, but I like knowing these things about him. I’m always so interested in everyone else that I never thought about anyone being interested in what I have to say. But I guess that’s his job.

Things I learned about myself:

I use my positivity and selflessness as a survival skill.

I appear way happier on the outside than I actually feel.

Apparently I’m not that good of an actor.

My life is a fucking mess.

Can you diagnose yourself with depression? I feel like there’s a stigma when you say “I have depression” but have never gone to a doctor. Like maybe you’re over exaggerating about the severity of your bad mood. But if you have all the symptoms for it, why not go ahead and call it what it is.

I have depression.

I have had depression much longer than I thought I did.

Dr. O made me make some goals for myself to get through as we go through therapy. One of them was to delve into the story of my mother and how that affected me. Another was to stop being so damn depressed. I think the two are related.

One of the exercises he did was ask me how I felt about myself a few months ago. I responded: positive, outgoing, overwhelmed, anxious. Then he asked me how I felt about myself now. I responded: angry, overwhelmed, sad, tired, resentful.